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Interpreting Violence on Healthcare in the Early Stage of the South
Sudanese Civil War

Xavier Crombé and Joanna Kuper

Introduction 1 On 15 December 2013, only two and a half years after the Republic of SouthSudan had
become an independent state, the long-simmering tensions between President Salva
Kiir and his former vice-president, Riek Machar, erupted into armed clashes in the
capital, Juba. War soon broke out. This article seeks to document and analyse
violence affecting the provision of healthcare by Médecins Sans
Frontières (MSF) and its intended beneficiaries in the early stage of the

story was shared more than 300,000 times ( Dzieza, 2014 ) and may have contributed to the wider landscape of panic and xenophobia
surrounding the epidemic. Online disinformation has also exacerbated conflict. In SouthSudan, the UN reports that
social media ‘has been used by partisans on all sides, including some senior government
officials, to exaggerate incidents, spread falsehoods and veiled threats, or post outright
messages of incitement’ ( UN Security Council,
2016 : 10). In one instance, a false news story, published on the website

are responsible for staff security as compared with civilian protection. An
advert for a ‘Staff Safety and Resilience Manager’ for World
Vision in SouthSudan, for example, lists ‘police/law enforcement or
military training’ among the requirements ( World Vision, 2018 ). Military-consulting firms have
been hired by humanitarian agencies to conduct threat assessments and to provide
advice and training on staff security to international humanitarian agencies

it is no longer possible, if it
ever was, to separate relief workers’ political convictions about what the EU should stand
for from their ethical commitment to helping people in need, rescuing people in danger of losing
their lives and helping refugees once they have arrived. The problem is that, however overstated, the claim of neutrality has always played an important
role in establishing the legitimacy humanitarian action has enjoyed in Europe. In SouthSudan in
the 1990s, there were two kinds of relief group: those who professed neutrality and

(warranted or not) as a ‘hopeless’ case, and the practical demands
of working in such a complex crisis over a long time period, carried particular
resonance for participants more immediately concerned with what is occurring in
contemporary Syria and SouthSudan, for example. The participation of two Somali
colleagues (via Skype), along with members of the Somali diaspora, was
significant in that sense. It provided an alternative (and frequently highly

Uses and Misuses of International Humanitarian Law and Humanitarian
Principles

Rony Brauman

described as ‘increasingly
serious’, culminating – at the time of writing – in systematic
attacks on hospitals and other civilian sites in Syria. Similar attacks in
Afghanistan, Yemen and SouthSudan add to the picture of once respected IHL being
trampled. Some offer numbers as evidence, citing the fact that the overwhelming
percentage of victims in World War I were soldiers, compared with contemporary armed
conflicts, where the proportion is reversed, attesting to the

identified as communicative
challenges for humanitarian monitoring and evaluation in SouthSudan, especially the
‘large number of national languages spoken and low literacy rates’
( Steets et al. ,
2016 : 28). Research on Greece’s migration crisis has illustrated a
need for similar considerations. It has shown, too, that links between language and
ICT innovations are complex. For instance, findings based on surveys with 202
refugees and migrants and 22

scale of human suffering remains
prodigious and that for as much good as they do, humanitarians frequently do little in terms of
a net reduction in suffering and misery (think Haiti, Syria, Somalia, DRC, Myanmar, Sri Lanka,
SouthSudan). Much suffering – private violence, civil and gang wars, state predation,
poverty, insecurity – is untouched by humanitarian intervention of any kind, yet this is
everyday reality for billions of people. One function of the entire humanitarian enterprise might be to obscure root causes and allow
those who, en

the ultimate target of policies. In February
2013, the PSCF was signed by eleven countries (DRC, Angola, Republic of Congo,
South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda, Central African Republic (CAR), Burundi,
Rwanda, SouthSudan and Zambia) with UN, AU, Southern African Development
Community and International Conference on the Great Lakes Region representatives as witnesses (Framework Agreement 2013). This agreement recognised the
need for greater commitment to peace on the part of the DRC, countries of the
broader region and donors. It placed particular responsibilities on

yet possesses – functions as the authoritative barometer of
full recognition and hence inclusion in the international society of
states.
Clearly, great powers matter. To that end, Milena
Sterio has proposed a ‘great power theory’ of self-determination to
explain why East Timor and SouthSudan became sovereign, but
Chechnya, South Ossetia and Abkhazia (to which we add Taiwan and